Isolate the gene and save the world....

From the boredom of men pontificating on the weather. It doesn't matter what type of man you are. If you are one of those fix anything, handyman types, you still have the gene. If you think a crescent wrench is made by Pillsbury, you still have the gene. In short, if you have a penis you are hard wired to have an opinion on the weather. Man's need for basic knowledge of cold and warm fronts knows no bounds. The amount of real knowledge is not important.
Ask any woman who has been in a relationship with a man if her beau watches the weather channel and you will always get a yes. Usually followed with a laugh and a "What's up with that?" Unless she is with one of those men that waits till she falls asleep. And then he creeps to the TV or computer and mutes the volume, almost like he's watching porn, and drinks in the world of high and low pressure, gulf moisture, Canadian clippers and tropical depressions. It is an obsession that is better brought into the light of day. All men have it, don't be ashamed.
My ever sarcastic bride can attest to my weather knowledge and need for current information. One night several months ago I was working on some computer stuff when I looked up and the weather channel was on. I left it on and when she turned on the TV there it was. One quick glance and I said, "That's a good looking map". While she was peeing on herself laughing so hard I went on to admire the clash of a low pressure system for Canada colliding with a weakening high pressure system over the Mid-Atlantic states with moisture form the Gulf of Mexico riding in to trigger thunderstorms. In short, a good looking map. Now I don't expect women to understand the unnatural desire to talk about the weather. But do not judge to harshly. Have you ever met a woman who couldn't spout on for 10 minutes on shoes? See my point?
It is merely a default mechanism for all male conversation. Any two men who find themselves in an uncomfortable situation always default to the weather. Stuck at a children's play with an ex-husband of your current wife? "Can you believe the rain last week?" It works. Pick any tight spot you may stumble into and the weather will bail you out. Stuck in a meeting and need to get out, "Cold front is on the way and once it starts raining that traffic is crazy. I better get going. It was Will Rogers who said, "Everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it." With apologies to the greatness of Will Rogers, we not only talk about it, we absolutely beat it to death. And we still don't do anything about it.

Till Next........

I am a hypocrite.

After my last blog post about the massive debt we have incurred as a country the last decade and a half it was pointed out that I need to take care of my own house first. This was no passing shot across the bow. It came from a man who I have considered a friend for 25 years now. We have gone to probably fifty different sporting events together, ran half marathons and 10ks, played more rounds of golf than I can count and spent at least a dozen holidays together. He came to the hospital after my children were born. Friends like that don't come easy.

When my life began to fall apart 10 years ago he was kind enough to try and help me out. I swore I would pay him back when I could. Never in a million years did I think my life would continue swirling the drain but it did and it started moving faster. Over the next several years I lost a job, my family and the respect of most who knew me. I say this not for sympathy because I neither want or deserve any. Even though most of my problems had the best intentions, they were all self inflicted. I don't believe in being a victim and will not start now. I screwed my own life up and the good news is I can fix it. And some wonderful people are helping.

In a perfect world my friend would have been the first one to be paid. But the IRS has a way of making themselves a priority. They wanted their 30 thousand and were very good at strangling me till I came around to their way of thinking. But they are almost done now. And then I will go onto my friend. I don't blame him for getting pissed. It probably doesn't help that we disagree on almost everything when it comes to politics and I have been known to twist the sarcastic knife on occasion. But if someone owed me money (and many do) and were constantly harping on reducing our debt I would probably call them up and ask if they meant what they promised?

Most of the posts I write are either political or humorous in nature. Sometimes both. But the ones I post on debt are not cut on party lines. Both have saddled us with a debt that is approaching a level we will never pay back. And I know first hand what large debt can do. At this point in time debt has been a large part of my losing my kids, a marriage, a business and now it appears a 25 year friendship. It doesn't have to be that way for the country if we do something now. If not, as a country, we will go through the same pain. I don't recommend it.



Till next........

Roses are red, violets are blue....

If it weren't such a serious crisis facing our country it would have been even funnier. How disconnected is Harry Reid? Our nation is so far in debt we are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and Harry says the "mean-spirited" bill would mean the end of the Cowboy poetry festival. Let that sink in for just a moment. We are going to run out of Social Security money soon enough and Harry is worried about the prose of John Wayne wannabe's coming to Nevada.


Let's pass over the fact that an inanimate object cannot be mean spirited or happy or anything else. Glaring stupidity was on full display when Harry added,"Without our Cowboy Poetry Festival, the tens of thousands of people who come to northern Nevada every year would cease to exist." Are they cloning people at the festival? Or do they spontaneously combust if they don't get to hear a Haiku once a year? Do they commit suicide if no one spouts out a limmerick? I had no idea how vital the Cowboy Poetry Festival was to the existence of tens of thousands of people.


Can you imagine the pressure to find a word that rhymes with "orange sunset" knowing people will just cease to be if you can't figure one out? What is really frighteneing is that Harry was just re-elected to the Senate. How can you be that far remove from reality? We have 45 out of our 50 states are in the red with their budget. The defecit this year is 1.3 trillion and the democrats and Harry in particular don't think any cuts should be made. A measley 4 billion out of a 1.3 trillion dollar budget. At some point don't we have to be adults?


Cut spending is what 70% of the country wants. Will you have to raise taxes? Probably at some point but to do that now is just taking an alcoholic to a bar and telling him, "Watch my drink while I go to the bathroom" and then being surprised when it's gone when you get back. If we don't start having a serious conversation about entitlements we will all be attending Harry's beloved Cowboy Poetry Festival. Roses are red and violets are blue, I am screwed and so are you........





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The train went off the tracks.....

on this very day in history. It was March 9th, 1959 that the world as we knew it before was forever changed. Those of us who consider ourselves normal and in the parameters of the masses never saw the change coming. Now I was not around then but I do love history.

American women had previously been admired around the world for the hour glass figure that they had. Hollywood had no problems casting women who were above a size 2 and were not afraid of showing it. And then on this date came the Barbie Doll. Standing at 11 inches high she was so disproportionate that if she were life size she would fall over. Then all of sudden everyone thought women had to be skinny. You can put me in the camp of," teenage boys should look like teenage boys and women should look like women." Barbie gave birth to a whole generation of Twiggy type models who look like they need a cheeseburger. Kate Moss and others have followed.

What makes it even more interesting is Barbie also spurred a generation of feminists. They would shout from the mountain top that Barbie was what was wrong with America. She symbolized women as objects and not smart, capable people. I don't know about all that. I think they just needed something to be angry about. The unemployed lumberjack look is less sexy than Twiggy. Some of those folks could use a little bit of objectifying.

Thankfully a woman like JLO appeared on the scene and the world is returning to sanity. The hour glass figure is again taking it's rightful place in society. Women should be proud of all the assets they have. I like a balcony you can do Shakespeare from as much as the next guy but don't try and put it on a lamp post. Then it looks almost freakish unless it's winding around a stripper pole. So let's all raise a toast to Barbie for starting this merry-go-round. Here's to you girl, bottoms up!



Till next.......

Don't you love the games you played as a kid?

Some of my fondest childhood memories surround being outside playing the games kids play. My favorites were hide and seek, kick the can and monopoly if we stayed inside. The sheer joy of having nothing to worry about except your own satisfaction. The freedom from all the responsibility that comes with being an adult hadn't even entered into my mind. We didn't have to worry about doing our job or planning for the future or even if we had enough to pay the bills.

How was I to know that if I had chosen a career in politics I could have kept playing all those games and kept those juvenile attitudes. If I ran for the senate in Wisconsin I could still be playing hide and seek outside of Chicago someplace. They aren't worried about adult things like doing their job or acting responsible. Not a care in the world at their "undisclosed location". Just like I was when I was a kid they will stay and play until the demand for them to come home gets too much to bear. But for now, allie allie in come free boys.

Then there is kick the can. I could have been a US senator or congressman the last 20 years and kept playing this one. Just give it a good kick and run away before you get caught. No need to worry about the future because once you kicked it away, it was somebodys turn, just not yours anymore. The future was only determined by how far you could get away from it. That is exactly what our representatives have been doing for 20 years. That's when the warning bells started about social security and Medicare and Medicaid first sounded. And what have they done about it. Kick it as far as you can. Now it's not your responsibility anymore. Just kick it down the road like you were a kid and head into the capitol and see if you can have ice cream.

Nobody could forget playing monopoly either. Fire in the fireplace because it's cold outside and all of a sudden you have the world of finance at your fingertips. You buy and sell property with money that has no real value. If it gets late in the game you have to re-shuffle the money or the game stalled. There wasn't enough money to finish the game. Damn, I could have been a chairman in the Federal Reserve. They have no problem printing more money to keep the game going. And sometime very soon our dollar will be worth the same as a monopoly $500 bill. Do what you can to keep the game going. When massive inflation hits we will just print more. We're talking Park Place and Boardwalk here baby. Don't stop now. We'll figure it out later.

I'd rather not go into playing doctor when I got a little older as training for the TSA. But what a shame it is that people we have entrusted to represent us have chosen to play kids games. Senators shirking their adult responsibility to vote for the people who elected them. Instead they hide like a spoiled child waiting for Dad to get home. It's pathetic. Representatives from both parties continue to ignore what everyone knows is a system going broke fast. And they act like kids blaming other kids so no one actually takes the blame. Pathetic again. And now Mr. Ben decides to buy our own bonds which is just another way of printing more money. If you have a lot more of something, is it more or less valuable? Obviously less but if we stop now we might feel pain. You know, like adults do when they are trying to balance the household budget. Or when they are trying to save for their kids to go to college.

How screwed up is everything if our kids are more responsible than we are? The answer is it's pretty screwed up and if we elect adults who tell the truth we might get out of it. Or we can continue to elect people who lie and demagogue every issue rather than deal with it. The choice is in our hands. Whatever we decide, can we have ice cream after we vote?



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It would be nice if they cared......

Gas prices are going to $4.00 a gallon shortly. There is no question that at that level our economy starts to slowly grind to a halt. The last time oil and gas were at these levels the wailing and gnashing of teeth could be heard from Washington at all hours of the night. I remember when it was all because President Bush was in bed with oil companies. Yet after hurricane Katrina Bush released some of our oil reserves to try and help the average citizen.

Has anyone suggested that President Obama is getting rich from oil companies? Or that he should do something? How about letting our own oil companies go back to work? So far one permit has been granted to drill in the Gulf of Mexico. For now I will ignore the fact that his moratorium on drilling was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge because that's what his administration does to federal rulings anyway. No, we know he is not getting rich from the oil companies. But that's not the dirty secret here. They don't care. They might even be happy.

In 2009 Obama said he was "comfortable" with $4 a gallon gas he just wished it went up slower. Well isn't that an easy point of view if you don't ever pay for gas? He probably hasn't paid for a gallon of gas since he was at Harvard. For those of us in the real world who have to balance a family budget it matters a great deal. In the dream world of high speed rail and universal health care and mediocrity I'm sure expensive gas works well. In reality, it taxes every American. When Senator Obama began campaigning he said under his energy plan "prices would necessarily skyrocket". His words not mine.

Green energy sounds like a great idea in a classroom or a wine and cheese party in San Fransisco but in the real world we are not ready to switch. We have more natural gas than the rest of the world yet we don't want to switch all our federal vehicles to run on it. Why? We have had a Department of Energy for how many years and billions of dollars worth of our money? About 40 years and we are in the trillions and what has changed? Your tax dollars at work. But this isn't incompetence, it is celebreated. The only reason you won't see a public display of satisfaction from President Obama is that 2012 is right around the corner.

So, much like Kevin Bacon's character in Animal House "Stay calm, all is well."

Till next.....

Anatomy of a long term freindship.

We have known each other all of our lives. He had a tough start to life and his appearance was changed forever where as I had the "Leave it to Beaver" childhood. It never mattered to either of us from the start. We just liked each other's company.

Early on when we were just past toddlers we would hang out together without a care in the world. Nothing to worry about except what was for dinner. It was the way it's supposed to be at that age. Even though we were together all the time neither one of us felt the need to have the upper hand. Like most long term relationships that changed and sometimes not for the better.

When we reached high school age, he became much more confident and independent than I was. He would jump up whenever he wanted to and I would cringe and just want him to sit down. Timing never seemed to be a concern to him. It seemed to be all I ever thought of. When we would get out of school I would try to beat the rebel streak out of him but it never worked. It seemed to only make him more independent than before. It was a very awkward time for me and I suspect it was tough on him as well. But the only thing constant is change.

The day girls and later women began to hold a certain appeal to both of us our relationship changed once again. We both tried our best to impress the ladies. I wouldn't use the word jealousy to describe our differences as much as I would say it led to differences of opinion. And then when you add alcohol all hell would break loose. We would have heated discussions over girls many times. Sometimes he would win, sometimes I would. But it was always interesting.

Fast forward a decade or so and our friendship still remained. We would get together and play whatever a couple of times a week and I would always beat the crap out of him. Sometimes I would wonder why he didn't just give up because we both knew the outcome but he probably enjoyed playing anyway. He has never lost his spirit, even to this day. We still hang out together but the only time we play anymore is if my wife wants to join us. He has learned to not even feign interest unless she is around because he still thinks I'll want to play and beat him up again.

Yes, the long term relationship a man has with his penis, Johnson or member is a complicated one. One is supposed to think while the other is supposed to do what feels good. Amazingly, we men seemed to get confused on which is which from time to time. Some men actually name their penis. That may be taking the relationship a bit to far. What next? Flowers for Valentines Day? No, we need to remember who is supposed to be in charge. Even though it gets hard to tell sometimes.



Till next.......